This state-sponsored militancy must end

It is a scandal that the taxpayer funds the trade union duties of public
sector workers, writes Dominic Raab.

RMT Union Leader Bob Crow receives £145,000Photo: Rex

By Dominic Raab

6:53PM BST 27 Jun 2011

The public is facing widespread disruption from three trade unions that can’t even muster support for strikes from a majority of their own members. Taxpayers should be shocked to learn, then, that they are funding union activities on a major scale. The public money paid to union staff working in or for Whitehall rose to £19 million in the financial year 2010/11. That figure, a legacy of the last government, would increase substantially if consistent accounting rules were applied across the public sector, and local bodies – including councils and police forces – were included.

Some of the hardest pressed departments are diverting the most resources to union work. At a time of financial strain on the criminal justice system, the Ministry of Justice spent more than £6 million on staff working full- or part-time on union activities in 2008/9 – the equivalent of more than 150 prison places. It is also the only major department that has failed to disclose its union bill for the past two years.

Despite the acute pressure accompanying the Strategic Defence Review, the Ministry of Defence has been lumbered with a bill for union work that tops £4 million. The Home Office and its agencies pay £2.5 million for hundreds of staff engaged in union activities – the price of more than 100 new police constables. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs spent more than £1 million last year. Hard-up farmers will be particularly frustrated to learn that the Rural Payments Agency funds 89 staff to work on union business.

The taxpayer is heavily subsidising some of the unions making the most unreasonable demands. Bob Crow threatens chaos on the Tube, while Transport for London pays more than 400 staff to work on union “duties”. Teachers will strike on Thursday, disrupting schools and parents, while councils paid £15 million in one year to fund the salaries of representatives of the teaching unions. As the Police Federation rails against the squeeze on police budgets – but insists on retirement at 55, automatic bonuses and overtime for working contractual hours – the bill for union work among a sample of 15 forces rose by 5 per cent in the past year. Meanwhile, as the Cabinet Office negotiates with stubborn union leaders, 43 of its publicly funded staff are working part-time on union business.

Union leaders are out of touch with public opinion. Unite lambasted my proposal for a voting threshold – requiring 50 per cent of union support for strike action in the transport and emergency services – as the kind of “draconian” measure expected from a North Korean dictatorship. Yet, according to YouGov, 59 per cent of the public support the measure, while a recent ComRes poll found that 63 per cent did not sympathise with strike action.

Related Articles

The Government has established the moral high ground on public sector pensions and pay, by making the case for restraint while protecting those on the lowest incomes. The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that pay and pensions in the public sector leave the average worker 12 per cent better off than his peers in the private sector. However, research by pensions consultants Hymans Robertson suggests this message has not yet got through to the public sector: just 3 per cent of such workers realised that the Coalition’s proposed reforms would still leave them with far better pensions than those available to most workers in the private sector.

Few would take issue with the unions working on behalf of their members in government departments and other public bodies – in their own time, or with union funding. But why are the public subsidising it? After all, in the six months to March the unions had enough money to give almost £5 million worth of donations to the Labour Party, while paying their leaders up to £145,000 per year (as RMT boss Bob Crow now receives).

As households rein in family budgets and small businesses grapple with tight margins, few see any justification for millions of pounds being paid in taxpayer subsidy to the unions. A YouGov poll last week found that 51 per cent support a ban on funding union activists in the public sector, with 26 per cent opposed.

As we brace ourselves for the first wave of industrial action, it is worth remembering that we are fuelling the very union militancy that threatens economic damage and public disruption. The Government should request a National Audit Office inquiry to discover the full public cost of funding union activities in the public sector, to pave the way for a ban that would save the taxpayer tens of millions of pounds a year.